(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to chairs, and more particularly to devices to permit adjustment and control of the tilt characteristics of chairs
(2) Prior Art
Office furniture has only in the last decade or so, become adaptable to the varying needs of their users. Frank Lloyd Wright's three-wheeled chairs for the Johnson Wax headquarters were an example of chair design that was indifferent, if not hostile toward the notion of sitting comfortably.
Office furniture in our service based economy, of necessity, has had to have improvements in chair comfort and simplicity.
An advance in chair design is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,259,431 which utilizes a compressible member for releasibly locking a chair structure to a chair base. This concept fails to permit ready manual adjustability to regulate the tilting of the chair structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,309,137 discloses a seat with a tilting mechanism. However, no means are disclosed for simple adjustment of the tiltability.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,813,069 shows a chair supported on a resilient pad, the pad having a number of holes drilled into it, so that rotation of the pad may vary the compressibility of the pad. The rocking/tilting is limited only to forward and backward movement, and no means are shown which permits simple manual adjustment thereof.
Another U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,982 discloses a compressible pad, but does not indicate any simple adjustable control thereover.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a simple, easily regulatable, manually adjustable tilt control mechanism, which permits side to side as well as forward to backward tilting, as well a tilting motion in all areas between those quadrants, to permit a full 360 degrees of precessional articulation of the seat surface.
It is a further object of this invention wherein a chair control mechanism permits an infinite amount of adjustability in the tilting capacity of that chair.